Doug Aitken

"Doug Aitken’s images long to convey meaning, linger for the sake of a hopeful connection, document without the need to instruct. How incredibly beautiful, he asks, is our world?"
Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson, excerpted from Doug Aitken: 99 Cent Dreams, published by the Aspen Art Museum.

ACTIVE BACKLIST

DOUG AITKEN: SONG 1
Text by Kerry Brougher, Barney Hoskyns, Dean Kuipers.
HIRSHHORN MUSEUM AND SCULPTURE GARDEN
ISBN: 9780978906320 | US $50.00
Pub Date: 8/31/2012
Active | In stock

DOUG AITKEN: BLACK MIRROR
Preface by Dakis Joannou.
DESTE FOUNDATION FOR CONTEMPORARY ART
ISBN: 9789609931427 | US $35.00
Pub Date: 9/30/2011
Active | In stock

DOUG AITKEN: THE IDEA OF THE WEST
D.A.P/DISTRIBUTED ART PUBLISHERS/MOCA, LA/JRP|RINGIER
ISBN: 9781935202516 | US $55.00
Pub Date: 1/31/2010
Active | In stock

DOUG AITKEN: 99 CENT DREAMS
Text by Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson.
ASPEN ART MUSEUM
ISBN: 9780934324373 | US $75.00
Pub Date: 4/1/2008
Active | Awaiting stock

DOUG AITKEN: SLEEPWALKERS
Foreword by Glenn D. Lowry and Anne Pasternak. Text by Klaus Biesenbach, Peter Eleey, Doug Aitken.
THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK
ISBN: 9780870700453 | US $39.95
Pub Date: 1/1/2007
Active | In stock

BROKEN SCREEN: EXPANDING THE IMAGE, BREAKING THE NARRATIVE
Edited by Noel Daniel.
D.A.P./DISTRIBUTED ART PUBLISHERS, INC.
ISBN: 9781933045269 | US $40.00
Pub Date: 11/15/2005
Active | In stock

DOUG AITKEN: SLEEPWALKERS BOX
PAP
ISBN: 9781568988719 | US $300.00
Pub Date: --
Active | Limited quantity

OUT OF PRINT LISTING

DOUG AITKEN: A-Z BOOK (FRACTALS)
HATJE CANTZ PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9783775712910 | US $39.95
Pub Date: 5/2/2003
Out of print | Not available

DOUG AITKEN: RISE
Artwork by Doug Aitken. Edited by Michael Holm, Anders Kold. Text by Poul Erik Tojner.
LOUISIANA MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
ISBN: 9788790029708 | US $21.00
Pub Date: 6/2/2003
Out of print | Not available

DOUG AITKEN: NOTES FOR NEW RELIGION
Essays by Francesco Bonami, Henry Grunwald, Jorg Heiser and Gijs van Tuyl.
HATJE CANTZ PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9783775710602 | US $35.00
Pub Date: 9/2/2001
Out of print | Not available

FROM THE BLOG

Ex Libris: Doug Aitken

Los Angeles-based Doug Aitken is one of the most important artists of the 90s generation. His work in multi-screen video and photographic installation has literally changed the artistic landscape, incorporating architecture, film and sound in new and challenging ways. Aitken has also become one of the last decade's most incisive interviewers of other artists, filmmakers and architects, as his many books and magazine articles attest. 
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Doug Aitken

Doug Aitken: Song 1

Text by Kerry Brougher, Barney Hoskyns, Dean Kuipers.
Published by Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

In a bold effort to redefine the public exhibition space, the Hirshhorn Museum has commissioned Doug Aitken’s most ambitious work to date. Song 1 is an unprecedented 360-degree moving-image work, requiring 11 high-definition projectors, that seamlessly blends imagery to illuminate the façade of the museum’s iconic cylindrical building--transforming it into “liquid architecture”--and create an urban soundscape. The scope of the artwork is large, yet at its core is a basic concept. Based around a single song, “I Only Have Eyes for You,” the piece explores the idea of pure communication through the perfect pop song. This distinctive book, designed by the artist and shaped to emulate the form of the Hirshhorn itself, visually interprets the work and places the work in a broader art historical and cultural context.

Doug Aitken: Black Mirror

Preface by Dakis Joannou.
Published by Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art

Doug Aitken’s Black Mirror is a meditation on the rootlessness and the extreme virtuality of contemporary existence. Comprised of a site-specific multi-channel video installation and a live theater performance at the Deste Foundation Project Space, Slaughterhouse, on the Greek island of Hydra, it stars Chloë Sevigny as a nomadic individual traversing airport terminals, hotel lobbies and car rental kiosks, communicating in quick pulses and travelling long distances for short meetings. The video installation was shot in and around Athens and Hydra, as well as Cancun, Mexico; Albuquerque and Gallup, New Mexico; Flagstaff and Arcosanti, Arizona; and Palm Springs, California. The performance was staged on a barge off Athens, and featured Sevigny, gospel singers, strippers and musicians, Los Angeles underground rock duo No Age and Greek percussionists.

Doug Aitken: The Idea of the West

Published by D.A.P/Distributed Art Publishers/MOCA, LA/JRP|Ringier

Sunsets over the Pacific. "Surfers." "Movie stars." "Coyotes in the street." "Sex." Doug Aitken's The Idea of the West gathers the responses of 1,000 people on the streets who were asked "What is your idea of the West?" and assembles this amazing manifesto from their replies. Through an assortment of more than 200 color and black-and-white images juxtaposed with responses to this question, The Idea of the West takes the reader on a high-speed journey across space and time to trace the mythology of the New West. The volume also features conversational fragments by a host of creators based in the Pacific region, including Devendra Banhart, Bruce Brown, Charles Burnett, Exene Cervenka, Fallen Fruit, Simone Forti, Fritz Haeg, Miranda July, No Age, Raymond Pettibon, Rodarte and Ryan Trecartin. A hybrid artist's book that brings together elements from classic 1970s photobooks, agit-prop paperbacks and music zines, The Idea of the West reflects Aitken's always expansive approach to art-making.
Known primarily for multi-screen video installations that function as immersive explorations of the experience of time and location, Doug Aitken has also directed many live happenings, including his "Broken Screen" happening in Los Angeles and the "99 Cent Dreams" and "Sonic" happenings in New York. In 2009, Aitken orchestrated a real-time opera that assembled auctioneers performing against the rhythms of his "Sonic Table," at Il Tempo del Postino, at Theatre Basel and presented a performance during the opening of his multichannel video installation frontier in Rome.

Doug Aitken: 99 Cent Dreams

Text by Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson.
Published by Aspen Art Museum

This lavishly illustrated artist's book is the largest and most ambitious publication yet produced by the Los Angeles-based video artist and photographer Doug Aitken--an artist known for his groundbreaking publications. Featuring a short text by Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson, Director and Chief Curator of the Aspen Art Museum, it focuses on Aitken's still images, more than half of which have never been reproduced before.
Known primarily for his multi-screen video installations, Aitken has gained international recognition for his immersive explorations of the experience of time and location. His exhibition at the Aspen Art Museum was the first dedicated solely to his photography. From nighttime cityscapes to deserted gas stations, airports and bus depots, Aitken's dreamlike photographs contain the same spatial and temporal dislocation and narrative suggestion as his installations.

Doug Aitken: Sleepwalkers

Foreword by Glenn D. Lowry and Anne Pasternak. Text by Klaus Biesenbach, Peter Eleey, Doug Aitken.
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York

In January and February of 2007, the Los Angeles-based video artist Doug Aitken projected a new work, commissioned by The Museum of Modern Art and the New York arts institution Creative Time, onto seven facades on and around MoMA's fabled West Fifty-third Street building. Sleepwalkers was both inspired by, and offered in opposition to, the densely built midtown environment; it integrated itself onto the surfaces on which it was projected, and it challenged viewers' perceptions of architecture and public space. The piece, which follows the trajectories of five characters as they make their way through nocturnal New York, explores Aitken's key recurring themes: broken and recombined narratives, the rhythm and flow of information and images, and the relationship of individuals to their environment. The viewer, as a pedestrian, a participant and a vital component of New York's energetic system, becomes part of the work, and of the interactive personal landscape that Aitken creates in and among the hard-edged concrete and glass language of Manhattan's architecture. In addition to documentation of Sleepwalkers, this publication contains an overview of the artist's work to date, with special emphasis on works since 2001. It also contains conversations between Aitken and a variety of artists, architects, writers and performers about different elements of city life, from the lit signage of Times Square to a taxi driver's eye view of the streets.

Broken Screen: Expanding The Image, Breaking The Narrative

26 Conversations with Doug Aitken

Edited by Noel Daniel.
Published by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc.

Broken Screen is comprised of informal conversations between artist Doug Aitken and a roster of 26 carefully chosen artists, filmmakers, designers and architects. Part guidebook and part manifesto, the book takes a fresh look at what it's like to create work in a world that has become increasingly fragmentary. Through casual and direct discussions Broken Screen offers a detailed navigation through the ideas behind the important yet under-documented visual language of nonlinear narratives, split screens and fragmentary visual planes that define the most progressive moving images today. Presented in 26 illustrated chapters, the focus here lies on the shattering of the linear narrative in the visual arts through the use of image-based work to articulate the speed and fragmentation of modern life. Perhaps best of all, Broken Screen is a unique opportunity for readers to learn the thoughts and personal beliefs of these artists in their own words and imagery, unencumbered by critical or commercial filters, and communicated in the manner of a conversation between friends. It also seeks to produce a cultural manifesto for new communication, expression and understanding in both the present and future--much as Marshall McLuhan's Medium is the Massage did. With its accessible conversational style, forward-thinking graphic design and over 300 high-contrast images, Broken Screen extends across many disciplines including art, film, design and architecture, and is sure to become an important document of our time. Aitken's 26 interviewees are Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Robert Altman, Kenneth Anger, John Baldessari, Matthew Barney, Chris Burden, Bruce Conner, Claire Denis, Stan Douglas, Olafur Eliasson, Pablo Ferro, Mike Figgis, Werner Herzog, Gary Hill, Carsten Höller, Pierre Huyghe, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Rem Koolhaas, Greg Lynn, Carsten Nicolai, Richard Prince, Pipilotti Rist, Ugo Rondinone, Ed Ruscha, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Robert Wilson and Amos Vogel.

Doug Aitken: A-Z Book (Fractals)

Artwork by Doug Aitken, Philippe Parreno. Edited by Marion Boulton Stroud, Russell Ferguson, Beatrix Ruf. Contributions by Michael Speaks.
Published by Hatje Cantz Publishers

Doug Aitken makes art at the edge of the world, with a kind of primitivism and ritualism unusual for video but mysteriously present in work that hovers at the edge where desert meets sea. Rise presents stills and installation shots from rise, the mirror, moving, these restless minds, 2-second separation, and i am in you, alongside an essay and interview with the artist.

Doug Aitken: Rise

Artwork by Doug Aitken. Edited by Michael Holm, Anders Kold. Text by Poul Erik Tojner.
Published by Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

Doug Aitken makes art at the edge of the world, with a kind of primitivism and ritualism unusual for video but mysteriously present in work that hovers at the edge where desert meets sea. Rise presents stills and installation shots from rise, the mirror, moving, these restless minds, 2-second separation, and i am in you, alongside an essay and interview with the artist.

Doug Aitken: Notes For New Religion

Essays by Francesco Bonami, Henry Grunwald, Jorg Heiser and Gijs van Tuyl.
Published by Hatje Cantz Publishers

The installation "Electric Earth," debuted at the 1999 Venice Biennale, brought international recognition to the video and media artist Doug Aitkin. In the piece, a dancer roams a transitory realm of wasted landscapes. Aitken, whose protagonists are usually natural landscapes and cityscapes, here links the electrified structures of our urban world with the nervous system of the human body. The piece, with its pop-surrealist overtones, also reveals Aitken's roots as a director of music videos. This artist's book, laid out in a landscape format, presents fascinating views of natural and urban lanscapes and structures from the video. Gijs van Tuyl, in his essay, writes, "You don't have to look through it passively from A to Z...it offers up a space in which the reader can move freely...in order to create a story in the here and now, in the flow of time."

Doug Aitken: Sleepwalkers Box

Published by PAP

The Sleepwalkers box is an experimental collaboration between Doug Aitken, Princeton Architectural Press, and DFA Records. Conceived in the spirit of multimedia editions of the past, such as Andy Warhol’s Index and the mid sixties artist edition/journal Aspen, the Sleepwalkers box is designed to encourage you to create your own multisensory experiences as you explore a kaleidoscopic universe of printed images, motion pictures, and audio recordings drawn from Doug Aitken’s groundbreaking 2007 Museum of Modern Art public film installation. In your hands, Aitken’s enigmatic story fragments, characters, and images become the building blocks of a new interactive multimedia work.